


war stories

by silkinsilence



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Hana and Satya are BFFs, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-15 01:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9212741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silkinsilence/pseuds/silkinsilence
Summary: Hana is haunted by ghosts of the past while trying to tackle the struggles of the present.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I began writing this fic with the general premise of Hana bonding with Overwatch's other ex-military over shared experiences, and it somehow turned into...well, what you'll see here. It was originally intended to be a oneshot, but as it's approaching 10,000 words and isn't quite wrapped up, I decided to section it up into three chapters. 
> 
> This section is largely angst, for which I apologize. There will be resolution! ...In the third part!
> 
> ...alternately entitled PTSD.Va /gets bricked
> 
> The Symmarah parts here tie in with [Parallax](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8250428), which I wrote back in October. You don't really have to read that to follow this, though, I think. I just realized I _could_ tie them together, so I did.

The first time, it's Lúcio.

The sounds of his skates and his music are dulled within the cockpit. An eerie echo. His laugh, too, is distorted. He dashes in circles of neon-green around her with reckless abandon. An untouchable force and an impenetrable wall, the pair of them.

She can't really hear what he says, but she does hear the gunfire. She hears a whoop of elation as he rides up a wall, dodging with ease.

And she hears the explosion. She feels it shake her cocoon. She sees fire. Red and orange, too bright, unreal. Her heart is going too fast, the monitor tells her, though she can't feel it. The roar in her ears has nothing to do with the sound outside.

His skates are mangled metal. She can still see a bright green light pulsing on one of them.

Just her, an impenetrable wall. Safe and swaddled.

" _L_ _ú—_ "

She yells herself awake.

 Her room is filled with sunlight. It's probably eleven or so. She remembers waking up at six, checking the clock, and passing out again. She should have gotten up then. The dreams are worst when she sleeps in.

Her heart is pounding. She's having trouble breathing.

The sheets are hopelessly tangled around her legs. She struggles for a few long moments before extricating herself. She just made the bed yesterday, and now she'll have to make it again. She idly entertains the idea of inviting Satya over before she just decides to bite the bullet and do it herself. Putting her room in order will put her mind in order.

Her water bottle is on her nightstand, accompanied by various containers of medication. She ignores the latter and drinks and drinks until she has to come up for air. When her throat isn't so dry, she eyes the bottle and dumps the remaining water over her head.

It helps a little. She towels herself off with the sheet and pushes her damp hair out of her face. Her heart is still stuttering along, but she forces herself to breathe.

After several minutes of overwhelming silence and air whooshing in and out of her lungs, she sighs and reaches for her phone.

Athena's welcome tone is bright and cheerful. Her Korean is welcome but bittersweet, sounding like home.

"Good morning, Agent Song. It is eleven thirty-seven on October third. The weather is eighteen degrees Celsius and partly cloudy. Would you like to hear your—"

There is a ripple of static and the AI's tone changes.

"Your vitals are registering abnormal levels. Do you require medical attention?"

" _No._ "

Hana clenches her fist in the sheet, forces herself to breathe for a few more seconds, and gets out of bed. She should probably wash the damp cloth before putting it back on, but she can't be bothered. She goes about making her bed, trying not to think about fire and melted metal.

"Very well."

Hana feels immediately guilty. There's no point in taking it out on the AI. She's just doing her job.

"Sorry, Athena. Shouldn't snap."

"That's quite all right, Agent Song. Would you like to hear your morning debrief?"

"Yeah, go ahead."

She shakes out the sheet and smoothes it over the mattress while she listens to her emails, her texts, and mission reports. Satya was apparently up at three the night before, asking for advice before immediately following it up with a _never mind._ A text from Hanzo inquires whether Hana's free later today for archery. There are a series from Lúcio. Her heart catches in her throat and she instructs Athena to skip them, figuring she can review them later when the dream is safely behind her. Probably more in their ongoing debate about the merits of _Harry Potter_ versus _The Lord of the Rings_ , or the more serious discussion of breaching Vishkar firewalls.

When Athena's done with those, she moves on to summaries of Overwatch activity. The three-man team of Zenyatta, Reinhardt, and Mei-Ling saw great success in their mission of apprehending a terrorist cell in Germany. The German government, in thanks, has pledged funding and support to the recalled Overwatch. That could mean reopening of a Germany base. Reinhardt would love that, Hana knows.

No news on Ana and Jack, undercover in China. As for those stuck at Gibraltar, daily team exercises are ongoing. New missions will be discussed when the three return from Germany.

Hana's almost done making the bed when Athena shifts to the news. She's only half-listening, until a certain phrase fixes its claws in her and refuses to let go.

"...over one-hundred-and-twenty confirmed civilian casualties in an attack in Moscow. Authorities have placed responsibility for the series of explosions on self-destructing omnics—"

Her breath catches again. The sheets wrinkle under her hands. Blood splatters over and over again onto the cockpit. Fire roars outside. Lúcio's music blends into a strangled yell and the sound of an explosion. She sits inside, all safe, so safe.

"—unknown, but further investigations are pending. Katya Volskaya released a message to the people of Russia urging strength and unity alongside the president's address. Volskaya Industries' newest Svyatogor models are expected to see completion before the end—"

"Stop it!" she bursts out. "Just be quiet!"

The immediate silence is deafening. Athena says nothing. Hana stands and breathes, shaking. It's the same in Russia. There will be pilots in their mechs, depending on technology to save them. Some of them will die, and some of them will live, only luck determining who's who.

A few long moments later, Athena breaks the silence.

"Agent Song," she says gently, "your vitals."

Hana resents it.

She rubs a hand across her no-longer-damp face, glares at her water bottle for being empty, and stares out the window at the strait. She slowly calms, though peace evades her this time. In its place is just a sinking feeling.

"I think I'll just finish the debrief later." The shaking undoubtedly undermines the nonchalance in her voice.

"Of course." Athena's logo blinks once and the screen goes dark.

She listens to over-loud pop music while she gets dressed, sending mental apologies to her neighbors, though Fareeha and Lena are both almost certainly up at this hour anyway. The tactic almost works to drown out her thoughts.

Almost.

When she's done getting ready, her room is perfect again. Her bed is made, her dirty clothes discarded into the laundry bin, her desk free of food crumbs or wrappings. Instead there are stuffed animals, mainly bunnies. Her own merchandise and that of her sponsors. Posters on the walls advertise various games, along with one featuring Lúcio's beaming face.

It's the room of the person she is when she streams. Right now she wishes it was empty.

Pinned right above one of her monitors is a picture, perfectly positioned so none of her webcams will pick it up. She's there, third from the right, giving the girl beside her bunny ears. It's the only good picture she has of her whole squad. No mechs, no omnics, just them standing beside each other and smiling into the camera with the confidence that says they'll do their jobs and save Korea before lunchtime.

And they did, didn't they?

* * *

"Was that great, or what?" Lúcio whoops as they trek back from the training fields to the showers. "Four out of four wins. They couldn't touch us!"

"I'd say we make a pretty good team," Lena chirps in agreement.

Hanzo, bringing up the rear, says nothing. When Hana glances at him, she sees that his face is as serious as ever, though he gives her a nod and she thinks his lips might even twitch upward.

The losing team trails behind the four of them, composed of Satya, McCree, and the Australians. Satya is wearing a pinched expression that suggests she has many things she wishes to say but that she is trying to refrain from voicing. Mako is busy chastising Jamie for his careless tendency to leave explosives lying around for his teammates to stumble into, a tendency that probably contributed to their less-than-stellar performance.

Victory by a technicality, Hana thinks dully. Talon won't be so careless, and neither will omnics.

Her teammates seem unbothered by the circumstances of their victory. Performance in the simulation was good, and they worked together well. She tries to focus on these positives and not on the sound of Lúcio's skates on the pavement. It's too reminiscent of the dream that shook her awake this morning.

"Hey, you get my texts?" the musician asks, slowing up to skate backward so he can look at her while they speak. He moves gracefully, almost hypnotically. His suit is turned off now, and Hana misses the pleasant sounds of his music.

"Yeah, sorry," she says with a pang of guilt, only now remembering that she never finished her debrief, never responded to the emails. "I had kind of an off day."

"Well, couldn't tell in there!" he says, grinning. "You were on top of it."

She was. It seemed much more real than usual. Her enemies were enemies, not pixels to be targeted and destroyed. It's left her feeling even more exhausted.

"And you had my back—"

"Two times," she interrupts. Lúcio gives her a look, one eyebrow raised. He effortlessly steers himself out of the way of a pile of supply crates without looking at them. She would be impressed if she wasn't distracted.

"Uh, two times what?"

"You were eliminated twice."

He frowns. "Hey, now, nobody's perfect. I'm getting better. Still haven't gotten shot on a real mission, have I? Give me some credit."

She wants to groan in exasperation, or grab him by the shoulders and shake him.  

"Have you ever thought about armor?"

"Armor?" he laughs. "Can't exactly zip around with all that weight. Why're you all critical today?"

She considers telling him the truth. She considers letting her words come out in a flood. She could tell him, and all of them, the things she's never said. She has whole volumes waiting to spill out of her mouth if she lets herself finally open the cover.

"Sorry. Didn't sleep well," she offers, giving a theatrical yawn to back herself up. It is not entirely a lie. A drop of truth out of the waiting sea.

"You've got to stop staying up so late, love," Lena butts in. "The fans can live without you for a few days."

She smiles inadvertently. It is a bitter look. The truth dies on her tongue.

Why give them more reason to treat her as a child?

* * *

She'll forget about it, she reasons. She'll forget the dream and the explosion and the thought of Lúcio dying while she watches.

And she does.

* * *

The second time, it's Jesse. She should have expected it, really. What use is a revolver when compared with the arsenals facing them? What good are his spurs and his belt and his stupid nonchalant attitude when he's dead on the ground, serape red red red—

She doesn't yell this time. She wakes dully, teeth gritted, realizing it was only a dream and finding no comfort in it. Her water bottle is empty and her room is flawless. She isn't ready to wake up. She isn't ready to listen to her debrief and find out how many people are newly dead today. Perhaps Jack and Ana, in China, have been caught and killed. Maybe it's only a matter of time.

She isn't ready, but she does anyway. She listens and pretends her eyes are dry. Somehow she isn't surprised to hear that she and McCree are both on the roster for the next mission. Dreams or prophecy. Sooner or later, someone will die. It's a fact in this kind of work.

A fact she has never been able to accept. Game over. Not dead, just out of sight. Still alive in her head, because the alternative is impossible to comprehend.

She has a stream scheduled for tonight. She will smile and exude confidence. D.Va. She is a personality rather than a person.

She stands in her room, cold and empty, both a soldier and a celebrity but not really either.

* * *

Satya is in a remarkably good mood. She's smiling more than usual, though at the moment the upward turn of her lips is replaced by the intense look she wears whenever she's focusing hard on something. It's funny to see her combat-face directed at a game instead.

It's nice to just play with her. No pressure, or at least not as much as usual. No urgency. Nothing real. Just the two of them in Hana's room, lounging on her bed and sharing wine. Like this, Hana can almost forget the black cloud hanging over her.

The round finishes. Satya won, either because Hana let her or because she's actually been getting pretty good. She leans back against the pillows with a satisfied sigh and takes a regal sip from her glass. How she manages to look elegant even in her loose, downtime clothes, Hana will never understand.

Once more, Hana considers saying something. It would be easy, she tells herself. Think the words and spit them out. It's just Satya. She's safe here. What is she scared of, really?

She's still deliberating when the smile makes a reappearance on Satya's face, and she speaks. For once, while both of them were fighting to find the right words, Satya came up with them first.

"Things are going very well," she says. Her smile is somehow even wider. It's cute.

The possibility of saying something dies again, but Hana hardly mourns its passing. Satya is more important than her nightmares, anyway; she's _real._

"Oh, with Fareeha?"

Satya nods, biting her lips in a futile attempt to hold back her smile.

"Did you _do it_?"

"Hana!" Satya chastises, indignant, still smiling.

"Well, did you?"

"Incorrigible. Well, no. We didn't." Satya pauses. She looks down and fiddles with the hem of her shirt. "But I think I would like to."

Hana grins. The discussion is comforting in its mundanity. Here they are, Overwatch agents, playing video games and talking about relationships. Here, if only for a little while, she doesn't have to perform. It's okay to just be a person. It's okay—

The faces of her squad smile out at her from above her monitor, and she remembers that there is no escaping the game of the battlefield. Friends in here are liabilities out there. Forgetting that, pretending that they're really safe, is only ensuring that it'll hit her all the harder when shit finally hits the fan. Luck won't last forever. They're not superheroes. They're just _people. People,_ not pixels. All of this is so very real. Her nightmares might as well be real when they're sure to happen eventually.

The wine tastes, abruptly, like vinegar.

"Is it smart?" she asks, still grinning, no longer amused. She doesn't want to ask, regrets letting the words leave her mouth as soon as they've left.

Satya looks taken aback.

"Is what smart?" Her voice is sharp. She is, as always, very sensitive to perceived insults. And, well, Hana knows the best thing to do would be to take it back and drop the subject. But though she knows it, she does not let it go.

"Well, you know. What if something happens? This isn't exactly the safest job for relationships."

Satya has caught her meaning; that much is evident by the harsh furrow in her brow. She sets her glass down and crosses her arms, closing herself off. Her nails dig into her arms.

 "I have thought about that, thank you very much. I have thought about it every day since I began becoming fond of the people here."

Hana's throat is tight. She really shouldn't have asked. She stares at the anger on Satya's face and wonders if she dreams about Fareeha falling from the sky. Maybe that would have been a better question. Maybe it would have been better to say what she really wants to say, to speak of McCree and Lúcio dead in front of her. But it's too late.

"It has taken me a long time to see human connections as more than a vulnerability," Satya continues. "I would thank you to respect that."

"Sorry," Hana mumbles. She can't look at Satya. She looks instead at the controller clutched in her hand, at the deep deep red of the wine. "Let's just—another game?"

There are a few seconds of cold silence before Satya speaks.

"I have work to do."

* * *

Angela's white suit is torn and stained beyond recognition, her wings mangled and broken. Lena looks even smaller with her legs twisted at impossible angles and her eyes wide and staring. Jamie's explosives are brutal and indiscriminate, claiming their engineer as eagerly as his enemies. Reinhardt's armor becomes a prison, trapping and crushing him inside it. And Satya's arm is detached from its owner, broken and sparking and no longer clean and shining.

Hana keeps waking up, keeps splashing water on her face, keeps thinking about her comrades dead. She streams and smiles, as chipper as she's ever been. She gets great scores in training. Winston comments that she seems more driven than ever, and she laughs. At team dinners she looks around the table and sees everyone bloody and dying.

She can't tell whether the horror is fading or whether she's just getting used to it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you believe that rendezvouses is a word because i cannot

"Anti-drowsiness medication? Why?"

The medical bay is empty. It's past ten in the evening, and there is thankfully nobody injured enough to require overnight care. Lúcio and Satya, Angela's occasional assistants, and Genji, her constant work-in-progress, are nowhere to be seen. It's just Hana, leaning against the counter, her casual demeanor belying the planning that went into this encounter.

"There's this tournament next week, and I've done it for years, but it'll be nighttime here. Just enough for a little while." The lies, rehearsed, come easily.

Angela studies her with a quizzically raised eyebrow. Overwatch's chief medic is, after all, very used to people attempting to wriggle their way out of (or into, in this case) treatment. Her face is stern. She always looks much older when wearing glasses and her lab coat, but Hana actually prefers her this way. On the battlefield, she always seems much too radiant, inhuman, unreal.

_wounded and bleeding and gasping for breath—_

Hana shakes away the specter and waits for a response.

"Surely you have your own methods of _medicating_?"

"Yeah, lowbrow ones. I hoped that since I'm working with all these scientists and doctors, I might be able to find a more _elegant_ solution." The word makes her think of Satya. Things have been less friendly on that front since the afternoon when Hana couldn't keep her mouth shut, but neither of them have actually brought it up again.

"I'm not sure I approve of you drugging as a replacement for sleep, especially with a mission coming up." Angela lifts a hand to push up her glasses only to find that they haven't slid down. "I'd suggest skipping the tournament, or taking training off."

"No—" She feels the strands of the argument slipping away from her, and a surprising panic accompanies the sensation. She hadn't realized how much hope she had placed on this silly bargain. She hadn't realized how much these horrors have been bothering her until she thought she might be able to let them go. "I don't want to let anyone down. Not you all, not my fans."

She stares, wide-eyed and pleading, at Angela. The doctor is still unconvinced.

"Taking care of yourself should come first. I don't want you to push yourself too hard."

The babying again. Is she like this with everyone? Hana wants to insist that she isn't made of glass; quite the opposite, in fact. Angela should be worrying about everyone else, not the girl safely tucked in her suit. If they see casualties in the upcoming mission, it won't be her. She'll be left behind, staring at bodies and knowing she could have done more. Just like in her dreams. Just like—

"Look," she says, her voice more serious now. "I've been having nightmares."

The doctor's expression sharpens in an instant, suspicion to concern. Hana hates that look on her face.

"In that case, perhaps going the other way would be more effective. I have sedatives—?"

"No." Hana clenches and unclenches her fists. "Just—just _please..._ "

The plea works. Angela gives in.

"Well, I _have_ actually been looking for someone to test this compound. Fareeha has experience with it—the Egyptian military used a similar version to help increase soldiers' stamina to be able to keep up with omnics for longer periods of time. And I suppose it's better than sedation in the field. We aren't expecting heavy combat in Cairo, after all. It's a shot, unfortunately, but you're fine with needles, aren't you?..."

She goes on, but Hana isn't listening. She doesn't pay attention as the doctor strides across the medbay to the locked cabinets where she stores her more valuable supplies. A numb relief suffuses her. No sleep, no dreams, no terrors. Just for a little while, and when she goes off, the nightmares will have run their course, right?

She ignores the knowledge in the back of her mind that she's putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.

The same heady lightness persists while Angela joins her again and carefully pricks her bicep, as she instructs Hana to come back at the same time tomorrow and to contact her _immediately_ if she notices any adverse side effects.

Hana only comes back to reality when she's walking out of the medbay and the doctor calls her back.

"I know what you'll say, but if you ever want to talk to someone—"

"Thanks for the meds, Doc," Hana says loudly. She raises a hand over her shoulder and leaves.

* * *

So she stays up. It's honestly less refined than she was expecting. Her hands quake the same way they do under the influence of energy drinks. The first night, around five AM, she thinks her whole _body_ might be vibrating, a unique but slightly discomfiting experience. She feels on-edge, hypervigilant. She loses three subsequent matches of StarCraft thanks to her jerky motions, then abandons that in favor of a walk around the base.

Sleep does not threaten. She won't tell Angela about the shaking. She is awake, and that is all she has asked for.

It is, admittedly, a lot of time to think, but Hana's gotten pretty good at avoiding thinking about things she doesn't want to. She thinks instead of the upcoming mission, reviewing the briefing in her mind. She thinks of Hanzo murmuring tips as she stands with bow and arrow in hand. She thinks a lot of the night before, when she saw a rumple-haired and confused-looking Fareeha departing Satya's room.

 _Is it smart?_ she thinks again. She won't make the mistake of asking Satya another time, but she doesn't think she'll be able to stop wondering.

If forced to choose a word to describe how she feels about this mess, Hana would settle on _annoying._ It's annoying that she keeps dreaming about her comrades dead and dying, _annoying_ that she's letting them disrupt her waking hours. It's especially annoying that she's now on some drug to keep her awake, too cowardly to keep falling asleep.

It wasn't like this in the army. She was _better_ in the army. Is she losing her edge? Did she peak back then? Hana Song, a has-been before twenty.

She comes out of the northern hangar and pauses. The sun is rising. The sea is still dark, ships and their lights twinkling like stars in the blackness, but the sky is lightening. She's almost always asleep at this time. Sunset is prettier, anyway, over the water, but there's something to be said about the merit of watching the world wake up. The sun is up. She's still breathing. They're all still breathing. That's something, isn't it?

She burrows her hands into the pockets of her overlarge hoodie and stares up at the vast, cloudless expanse above her. Even with the jittery sensation lingering, she feels calmer.

Whatever it is, whatever's causing this, she needs to get over it. Get back in the mindset that got her through before. Anything less will prove detrimental not just to her, but to the team. She's not about to jeopardize the next mission, or any subsequent missions, with her _issues._

 _If you ever want to talk about it..._ Doctor Ziegler echoes in her mind.

"썩 꺼져,” she sneers.

Hana Song will _not_ be a weak link in the chain that is Overwatch. It's a game and she's going to win, just like she's won all the games that have mattered before. Her fellow players' losing isn't her problem. Nothing to worry about.

She thinks of faces smiling from a photograph and is, abruptly, dizzy. The rocks swim below her. The sea is a wrong step away.

She wrenches herself back the other way, back toward the main part of the base. She forces herself to focus on something else. On breakfast, on the day's upcoming simulations...

When she gets back to the dorms, the sky is bright. Lena and Winston stand beside the doors leading outside. Somehow it feels very good to see them, even if she last saw them just at dinner the night before. While she was walking through the deserted hangars and unused maintenance buildings, it was easy to forget that there was anything in the world apart from her and her thoughts.

"Hana!" Lena greets, chipper despite the ungodly hour. "Don't usually see you up this early."

"Have to keep surprising you, don't I?" Hana looks between them. Seeing Winston in casual clothes is always something of an odd sight, though the novelty has largely worn off. Mostly she just doesn't understand how Lena's legs aren't freezing in shorts. "Morning run?"

"Yeah! Care to join us?"

Hana considers. She did just spend the better part of the past couple of hours wandering aimlessly around, and jogging sounds much less tempting than breakfast. But as far as distractions go, sore legs and burning lungs are a pretty good one, and her cardio's been lagging.

"Dunno. I was out for a walk."

Winston perks up at that and inserts himself into the conversation. "You didn't happen to see Genji anywhere, did you?"

"Uh. No. Was I supposed to?"

He sighs and shakes his head, looking a bit put-out. "No, nothing like that. His comm's turned off and I wanted to talk logistics. He's great at the disappearing act, but I wish he wouldn't do it around here."

"You could sic Hanzo on him. Ninja finds a ninja." Hana can't stop from smirking a little at the mental image.

"Er." Winston pulls off his glasses and wipes them on his shirt. "I don't know if—'sic'-ing Hanzo on him is really the best idea—"

He's interrupted by the doors behind them opening to reveal Reinhardt. The knight, as apparently unperturbed by the early-morning chill as Lena is, is wearing a tight-fitting black t-shirt and running shorts. Really _short_ and _tight_ running shorts. The kind of running shorts Hana doesn't think she would ever want to see on anyone, let alone on someone old enough to be her grandfather and all but occupying that position in her life.

"Hana!" Reinhardt beams when he sees her standing there. "Up so early—and wearing my sweater!"

She finally tears her attention from where it had been rudely fixated on his crotch in order to look unnecessarily down at her hoodie, which proudly reads _Universit_ _ät T_ _übingen._ Hardly a month after her initial arrival at the base, she'd won it from Reinhardt in a game of poker. The real prize would have been Jesse's serape, which she suspects the cowboy cheated in order to keep, but the hoodie was just as satisfying at the time. It's big enough to swallow her arms and hang down to her knees, not practical but certainly comfortable.

"It's not yours anymore, old man," she says cheekily. Reinhardt laughs.

"And it looks better on you than it ever did on me." He looks around at the other two. "Are you joining us?"

Winston is waiting, a little impatient if the movement of his feet is anything to judge by. Lena is still grinning at the look on Hana's face.

She makes up her mind on the spot. "Nah. I'm having breakfast. You all enjoy your run."

"Will do! See you around, luv!" Lena calls. And then, to some signal Hana can't discern, they're off, in what seems less like a pleasant jog and more like a race. In what feels like the blink of an eye the trio disappears around a bend in the track, and Hana finds herself suddenly quite relieved that she turned down the invitation.

She wanders inside. She needs to hunt down Satya and get details about the night previous. But first, breakfast.

* * *

 "You're shaking."

She lands one more bull's-eye for the sake of it before turning to him. Hanzo looks sharp, in a way that someone less acquainted might take for criticism, but which Hana recognizes to be concern. It would be touching if she didn't want to hide the cracks. As it is, her affection is tinged with annoyance.

"Oh, huh," she says, looking down at her twitching fingers with nonchalance. She should know better than to expect such a tactic to work on him, and, indeed, it doesn't. The furrow between his brows deepens.

"How have you been sleeping?"

"As much as I need to," she says glibly. She doesn't really want to get into Angela's mystery formula. Hanzo will ask questions the doctor did not think to. She's told a lot of lies about her new medication. She came closest to telling Satya the truth. She doesn't like lying to the architech because Satya is so honest herself.

"Then why are you shaking?"

"Too much Red Bull. God, get off my back." She says it without any real bite, and he seems to listen. He is silent while she reloads and prepares for another go at the moving targets. She lands a good eighty percent of her shots right on target, leaving no room for criticism of her stance or focus. But still she feels his eyes on her, intense, always watching, somehow _knowing._

"Are you all right?"

"I'm _great._ "

Clashes with the omnics claimed another hundred-odd lives in Russia over the past weekend. There's been suspected Talon activity reported in the northeastern U.S. An unusually sophisticated virus has debilitated Athena's operating speed, Winston worrying that the attack was deliberate and the first of many. The Cairo mission begins tomorrow and Hana hasn't slept in what feels like forever.

Yeah, things are great.

"You have not been yourself of late."

She really, really wishes he would just let it go. If he wants to accost someone about their feelings, Satya and whatever's going on with her and Fareeha seems a much more important candidate.

"Nothing to worry about."

"I do worry."

It is a surprising sentiment, coming from him. She turns to look and wishes she hadn't. When she looks at him, again she feels the pull, the desire to say everything she's been thinking and feeling. To open her mouth and let words rush out.

But she's not about to open the floodgates less than twenty-four hours before she leaves on a mission. Besides, he's an assassin, not a soldier. He wouldn't get it.

Before she has the chance to think of something to say, he continues. "Why did you wish to practice with your pistol today, rather than continuing our archery lessons?"

Her lips twitch upwards into a bitter smile.

"I fly out tomorrow. I'm not you; bow and arrow's not going to do me or anybody a lot of good in the field. Waste of time, y'know?"

He watches her for a few more seconds. Softer, somehow, still concerned. Then he turns back to the targets.

"Then let us continue."

* * *

The laboratory is one of Hana's favorite parts of the Watchpoint, though circumstances don't give her too much occasion to hang out there. Its broad glass windows provide a wonderful view of the strait, and its insides are equally as fascinating. Winston's corner is filled with half-finished gadgets and curios; Mei's section features maps and charts that mean nothing to Hana, various soil and plant samples, and her flurry-producing drone peeking from a drawer; and Satya's workspace comprises neatly-organized blueprints, plans, and prototypes.

Tonight the architech is the only one there, quietly sketching out ideas for security updates. Pencil and paper are largely obsolete, but Satya has said that she enjoys the sensory aspects of graphite scratching on a blank surface. Hana alternates between watching her work and staring out the windows at the distant white blink of a lighthouse.

The silence is thick and heavy. There are weights on both women's shoulders. Neither is eager to begin a discussion.

Satya speaks first. Even her soft voice seems too loud.

"Are you still on that anti-drowsiness formula?"

Hana grimaces. Sure, it's always easier to talk about someone else's problems.

"Yeah."

"You do not think it will impact your performance tomorrow?"

"I think I've mostly gotten used to it." It's the truth. She's stopped shaking. The feeling she had the first night, like she needed to go to sleep but was somehow unable to, goes away, or she just doesn't notice it as much. "I've been performing fine in simulations, anyway."

"That is good." Satya attempts a smile. It does not look like the real thing.

"So. Relationship updates?"

The almost-smile vanishes in an instant. It is briefly replaced with a look that Hana has never seen on her friend's face before. A look of desperate unhappiness, of trying to contain tears. Then Satya schools her expression back into pointed concentration.

"There will be no updates."

"What does _that_ mean?"

Satya is nowhere near as good at Hana at feigning nonchalance, but she keeps her tone crisp and professional.

"I believe it is over."

"Over?" This comes as a shock. "But things seemed to be going really well."

"Yes," Satya agrees. "They did." She draws a harsh line across the paper in front of her. Hana looks down as well. She's drawing the launch pad, making small marks to indicate turret positions.

"Did you have a fight?"

"Not—not a fight."

"Well, did she say it was over? Did you?" Hana presses, not understanding.

"No! It was not said—I ruined it, Hana! It was only a matter of time, and I ruined it!" The facade crumbles. Satya, clearly distressed, raises her left hand. She plays with blue strands of hard-light, wrapping and shaping it around her left hand.

"How do you know you ruined it if neither of you said anything?" And then, when Satya remains stubbornly silent, "You haven't even talked to her about this, have you!"

"It is none of your business," Satya finally bursts out, a line that Hana was honestly expecting to hear several minutes ago. But if the architech's patience is wearing thin, so is Hana's.

"Like hell it isn't! Do you want to be miserable? You've been spending the past week sulking instead of talking to her, and now you're just resigning yourself to ending it? What is wrong with you? Don't you realize what we're doing here? Do you want her to die on a mission and you never even bothered giving her a conclusion?"

Satya's eyes are overly bright. Hana charges ahead.

"I've never wanted to call you a coward before. Do you care about her or not?"

"Of course I do," Satya manages.

"Then _talk to her_!" Hana roars. "And if it's over, it's over! But have it said! Don't just let it slip away because you were too scared to say something!"

Satya sits silently, staring at her. Her cheeks are wet. Stray drops have warped the paper on which she was drawing. In her lap, her fingers still move, pulling out shapes.

Guilt finally catches up.

"Sorry," Hana mumbles, and she heads for the door.

* * *

In Cairo, shit hits the fan _fast._

The debrief described the mission as simple. The six-man team of Hana, Jesse, Bastion, Zenyatta, Ana, and Zarya was dispatched to provide backup for Helix International's security at the Temple of Anubis site after attacks threatened by an omnic terrorist group. They had all memorized the complex's layout, extensively gone over the tactics and weaponry they were likely to face, and run virtual simulations with the Helix squads. Nobody expected much of a firefight; at the final briefing Winston told them all that Overwatch's presence could very well be enough to deter the attack in the first place.

On the ground, it rapidly becomes clear that the opposite was true. The first series of remote-controlled explosives strike the surrounding city and scatter the team.

"Damn it, this isn't amateur hour," McCree puffs over the comm. He sounds winded, but unhurt. "This's an ambush, Winston, they're targeting civilians—"

"I know!" Winston, monitoring from Gibraltar, sounds nearly frantic. "Aerial footage shows at least—fifteen armed attackers at the temple complex. Could be more in the crowd. Helix needs backup. Zarya, can you help evacuation? Local authorities will be there soon. The rest of you, the temple. We can't let them get inside!"

Right. The dramatically-named God Program. Hana grits her teeth and fires up her boosters.

The next part is easy, surprisingly so. It's familiar, almost nostalgic. This is the part she's good at. The surprise of a mission gone wrong is so reminiscent of her army days, when plans were shots in the dark destined to crumble before they went anywhere. Just her and her instincts, like playing a game for the first time.

She slips into that mindset with ease. At the temple entrance she rendezvouses with the Helix teams and they move in. She privately thinks of them all, in their Raptora suits, as "not-Pharahs." Her comm is a buzz of information in the background, the team checking in.

They catch the first of the omnic attackers underground. They're more heavily armed than the briefing led her to expect, but Hana only thinks glibly that the fire is nothing compared to Bastion turrets. She and the not-Pharahs take out three while sustaining only minor damage.

At an intersection of two hallways, where the ruins of the temple meet the sleek modernization of the secrets hidden within, they meet another attacker, unarmed. One of the Helix agents just has a chance to yell a warning before the omnic detonates.

Hana's display flashes red warning signs as the ceiling crumbles—

Just her, now, cut off from Helix. Stone crashes around her. The space isn't big enough for her suit. Her stomach twists and roils and the feeling of safety abandons her. She ejects.

The ancient walls around her are shaking. It's dark. She runs and runs, breathing in musty air. Is this like the pyramids, a maze designed to trap and kill would-be robbers? The path is sloping slightly up, but that doesn't mean anything really—

Another omnic at the end of the hall. She almost feels relieved to see someone else before she identifies it. Its eyes beep deadly red the same way its friend's did.

She does not have the bulk of her mech to absorb this explosion. It throws her back; she hits the wall and crumples, and everything is pain and heat.

Her head is swimming and her mouth tastes like blood. Suddenly there is a lot more light and the air isn't as musty.

She lost her sidearm in the blast. She gropes around for her communicator and can't find that either. She sits, awkwardly propped on the stone, and manages a stupid grin.

All this time, she's been worrying about everyone else. Lúcio, McCree, Angela, Satya. She's safe and they're dead. But that's not how it's playing out, is it? This time, it's her. Not quick enough, not good enough. Or maybe just luck. There, bleeding and prone, it feels like good luck. Finally, something she probably deserved a long time ago.

She blinks a few times, and slowly it dawns on her that the light is not a product of a dying brain. The last blast took out the roof. It's daylight.

But there's another omnic standing above her. A Bastion unit. She waits for its display to blink red and its gun to finish the job. Without meaning to, her eyes slide closed.

\-- _gg!_

She wakes. Her head keeps banging on metal. She's being jostled back and forth, up and down. Her nerves protest the abuse and she groans.

There's a beep in response. She looks up into a familiar face and squints.

"Bastion?"

She's being carried in two metal arms across uneven stone. The sun blares down.

She's alive. She's alive. She's alive. She's—

Bastion's steely torso is not a comfortable pillow, but she rests her head there anyway as the unbidden sobs escape her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I drew Hana in Reinhardt's hoodie:
> 
>  


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i got depressed and finished this, so, uh, thanks, depression.
> 
> title dropping is fun. 
> 
> also i would apologize for referencing inception twice now in my ow fics but i just really like inception okay
> 
> please tell me what you think!! i really appreciate it.

Later, she wakes again in the medbay. Back in Gibraltar, then. She squints at the white of the walls. It's quiet except for the beeping of machinery from next to her. The last thing she really remembers is pain, but there isn't too much of that now.

She lies back and stares at the ceiling as her mind catches up. Egypt. Sun and stone and a hell of a lot of things blowing up.

Anubis—the mission. Failed?

When she glances around, she sees her phone lying on the bedside table. She picks it up. Athena cheerfully welcomes her back to the realm of the conscious. Hana's eyes start watering again at the sound of the familiar voice. She's been out for two days, give or take, the AI informs her. She missed the post-mission debrief, but Athena will be glad to fill her in.

Before Hana acquiesces, something noteworthy catches her eye. A text from the morning she left for Egypt, missed until just now. She opens it and sees the attached image, and she can't help but smile. It's a selfie. Satya smiles up at the camera, her hair spilling over her pillow, and beside her a sleeping Fareeha.

Hana grins, bites her lip, lets tears slip down her cheeks.

"Fuck yeah." She sets her phone down. "Okay, Athena. Catch me up."

It's not as bad as she expected. Anubis, at least, remains safe. The technicians have secretly updated security in response to the past attempts on the program. When the attackers realized they would be unable to reach the rooms, they resorted to explosives in an attempt to bring the entire complex down. The underground bunkers remained undamaged, though the temple itself suffered heavy damage. All attackers were neutralized or detonated; none remained to interrogate. Given the weapons and strategizing, Athena theorizes that Talon had a hand in assisting the attack.

Winston was furious about being left in the dark about the upgraded safety protocols; he's been in arguments and discussions with Helix management and UN officials for the past couple of days.

Thirty-four civilian casualties, the majority in the initial blasts. No Overwatch casualties; Hana was deepest in the temple and the worst injured. Five Helix agents down.

She closes her eyes and grits her teeth at that. Five Helix agents. The ones she was with? The ones she was separated from when the ceiling came down? Maybe that collapse was what did it. Not-Pharahs, she called them. Now they're Not-Anybodys. And just like always, she was safe. Just like always, she got away.

It comes back to her, the explosion, lying limp and broken on unearthed stone. She gave up. The sky was above her, safety just a few meters away, and she gave up. That's the _really_ unforgivable part.

She's still crying when Doctor Ziegler comes out of her office and pads over to her bed. Hana quickly wipes her snotty, tear-stained face on her gown and looks up. The doctor tactfully declines to mention her puffy cheeks and red eyes.

"Good to have you back with us," she says, offering a smile. "How is the pain?"

"It's fine. I mean, there's not much."

"I'm afraid I'll need to keep you in bed for a few more days," Angela says, though her tone is less remorseful and more vaguely threatening. "You have nine broken ribs, contusions across your back and legs, and a concussion. The biotic treatment will speed things along, but restfulness is still important. Of course, I've discontinued the energy formula to prevent conflict with your other medications."

"Okay," Hana sulks. "I'll stay in bed." Inwardly she marvels at the number nine, tempted to press down on her chest just to feel the pain for herself. She decides to resist, at least until the doctor is out of sight.

"Good." That earns her another smile. "I'm very glad you're awake. We have all been worried."

Which is true, judging by the visitors Hana receives over the next few days. Eventually she has to ask Angela to start restricting visiting hours, because she isn't really up to smiling and pretending all is well. She spends most of her time lying in bed and staring at the far wall, thinking about things she really should have thought of a long time ago.

To her surprise, Bastion visits the day after she wakes up. The omnic brings a bouquet of bright pink camellias. Hana smiles despite herself at the huge blossoms. She wonders where Bastion got them. She imagines her visitor making the trek or drive to the nearby village, visiting a florist, holding out the chosen flowers in the same metal hand that pulled her from the rubble.

Nah, no way. The image is amusing, though.

The omnic stays for a few minutes, wandering around the medbay and beeping every now and again. Ganymede flies in circles and perches on her IV.

The pair of them might be her favorite visitors. It's only after Bastion is gone that Hana realizes she forgot to say thank you.

She avoids her communicator, the internet, even handheld games. It's probably the longest time she's ever gone without updating her Twitter. She listens to old voicemail from her parents and thinks, guiltily, of how long it's been since she called them.

_Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad! Almost died again. You know, the usual!_

She fixates on a story Satya once told her. One of the first stories Satya ever told her, in fact, when Hana asked about how her devotion to Vishkar diminished.

_"When I was in training—school—whatever it should be called, there was a caf_ _é where I enjoyed getting food in the mornings. First I went once a week, then twice, until I was going every day. Of course, when you have something every day, it's difficult to enjoy it as much. Eventually it became routine, and then I did not enjoy it at all. Some days I did not want to go, but imagining not going made me anxious. It was silly, and I knew it was silly, but somehow something I had once loved had become a pressure and a burden, a chore, done only because it was all I knew how to do."_

_She paused._

_"Vishkar—was like that."_

Hana could not relate when she first heard it. Now, lying in bed and being tired, so desperately tired, of acting like she's okay, she thinks she understands a bit more.

* * *

When she decides she wants to talk, she carefully considers her options. Not Angela—too clinical, too patronizing. She dwells on Lúcio for a long time before deciding against it. He's too expressive, and she doesn't want to have to see the reflection of her war stories on his face. Not Hanzo, too withdrawn, still an assassin rather than a soldier. Not Lena, too optimistic.

She settles uncomfortably on Satya and waits, feeling something like a jungle cat waiting to pounce on unsuspecting prey.

The opportunity arises three days after she wakes. Satya sits at her bedside, tapping away at her tablet. A holo-screen in front of both of them plays a show to which neither is paying attention. Hana is pulling up words from the well inside her and trying to put them in order.

"When I was in the army," she blurts. Satya looks up, eyes wide. "In Korea. The omnics. You know." She gets a nod, though it's clear that Satya doesn't really know where this is going. "My squad, the MEKA program, we were mostly gamers. There were a few career soldiers, and our COs were military, but aside from that it was people like me. I knew a lot of them, too, from before. It was really weird at first, training and fighting alongside these people that I'd only known from screennames and stuff before."

She smiles a little at the memories. "We didn't really take to military discipline. There were a lot of rough patches, fights with command. They wanted us to be soldiers, but soldiers hadn't worked. We all wanted to do our own thing. Eventually we settled with a little of both, and that got us through. Command never liked the way we'd joke on missions, make bets, shit like that. But it kept us going, you know? So-yi takes down fifteen Bastion units, so I have to take down twenty."

Hana pauses, swallows.

"My squad. The first-generation MEKA squad. We saved the peninsula." She says it without pretension or pride. Indeed, compared to the other outstanding things she's done in her nineteen years, this has never brought her much pride. "And more than half of us—them—us—died."

The photograph. She grimaces. Satya is silent at her bedside, still wide-eyed, looking overwhelmed. But Hana has started now, so she won't stop.

"It just—when it happened, when we were fighting and someone got gunned down, you couldn't stop. I mean, we were fighting evolving AIs looking to exploit any weakness. So someone was dead. That wasn't important. A lot of other people would be dead if we stopped. So you pressed pause on grief. You could come back to it after the fight."

She smiles. Ah, her eyes are watering now.

"I never pressed play on it again. I didn't want to think about it. I just kept going, pretending like they were out of the game but not out of life, or something. Something stupid. Next time we deployed, one fewer person on the ship. And I always told myself that they'd just made stupid mistakes. I wouldn't make mistakes. I was too good for that.

"Except now, you know, when I look back, they weren't mistakes. Every time, it was just bad luck. A unit where we didn't expect it. Bombs. Suit malfunction, once. It could have just as easily been me. Some of them always beat me in games, got better combat scores, but they died and I kept going. And I don't get how or why. The smallest change and it could have been different. So-yi lives; Hana dies."

She breaks off and clutches the sheets. Does it help to talk about it? Now it just feels like the monster is in the room instead of inside her. The specter hovers between her and Satya as she waits for a response.

Satya begins hesitantly, softly.

"You feel guilty about surviving."

"Of course I do."

"But it isn't your fault. If, like you say, it was luck, then you have no reason to feel guilt. It isn't as if you could have helped them and did not."

The pit in Hana's stomach grows. This was a bad idea. She doesn't want to hear any of this.

"How do you know? How do you know I couldn't have helped any of them? I could have! I could have tried, at least! But I never did, because I was scared, because it was just a game, because the objective was more important!

"God, what do you know about it? What do you know about being safe in a mech and watching people on the other side of the cockpit die? On your stupid Vishkar missions, it was only ever your life at stake, wasn't it?"

Satya's mouth stretches into a very thin line. Hana does not take it back. She stares down at the holo-screen, still playing whatever stupid nonsense they elected to watch. There are fireworks going on in the show. People laughing.

"You are right," Satya says stiffly. "I...don't have that kind of experience. I can only imagine how you felt, and that has never been my strong point."

"Thanks for listening," Hana breathes out.

They sit in lukewarm silence until the episode ends.

* * *

Fareeha visits the next day. Hana can tell that she must be fresh out of a meeting with UN representatives because she's wearing a suit. Her expression is unusually somber.

"Don't tell me they've renewed PETRAS," Hana says, attempting to break the ice. It works; Fareeha grins and shakes her head.

"No, just reviewing to see if there were any protocol breaches on the mission. Like always, they're concerned about red tape, misuse of funding, just things like that. Your name came up."

"Did it?" Hana sits upright. She's not too injured to go to meetings if she's being discussed there, damn it.

"Just the cost of a new mech. Don't worry; they understand the circumstances." Fareeha comes to a stop beside her bed. She looks down at the camellias where Doctor Ziegler put them in a vase. The silence stretches long. They're done with pleasantries, neither eager to move on to what comes next.

Hana goes first. "I'll apologize to her."

"What?"

"I said things I shouldn't have. It's...it wasn't great."

Fareeha seems to understand. Her face somehow softens. "Satya's not mad at you. She's worried about you."

"Oh." Honestly, Hana would prefer _mad._ "Well, I'm still going to apologize."

"She didn't tell me much." Fareeha gestures at the chair next to the bed, a silent _can I sit?_ to which Hana nods. "Just that she thought you might get more out of talking to me."

Hana tilts her head to one side and looks at Fareeha. Right, she used to be in the army too. But she's always so calm, so confident. It's hard to imagine her waking from nightmares of her comrades dying around her, or at least hard to imagine her letting them affect her work performance. And suddenly Hana's back with the same uncertainty that muzzled her in the beginning. She's not a child. She doesn't want to look like one. If everyone else can cope fine, then she can too.

She forces the doubt and hesitation down. She's made her decision and she's sticking to it. Now that she's started opening up, there doesn't seem to be much point in stopping. Her words are out there, for better or for worse.

"When you were with the military, did you worry about people dying? Other soldiers?"

"Of course." Fareeha's face is solemn now.

"And, like...whether you could have done anything about it? Whether it should have been you instead?"

Fareeha shifts in her chair. Hana wonders if she expected this topic of conversation. She looks uncomfortable, though much less so than Satya did yesterday.

"When I began moving up the ranks, giving orders instead of following them, it bothered me more and more. People were putting their lives in my hands, in my command. But I...well, back then, I always considered the objectives more important. Outcomes—justice—were more important. That was how I felt about my life, anyway, and I assumed the other soldiers agreed."

She rubs her chin with one hand.

"Back then?" Hana prompts. "So something changed."

"Right, well. Actually, it wasn't until I started working for Helix. A mission—at the Temple of Anubis, actually." She manages another smile. "You know about it, probably went over it a lot in the briefings for this one."

"Yeah, I remember. You had to contain the program."

"I had to choose between my fellows' lives and the objective. It wasn't as easy as it had been before. After that, I started going back in my mind, thinking of all the sacrifices I had made before, wondering if they were really necessary. It was—well—I began wondering more about the greater good then. If it was worth it. If I had just been acting like some chessmaster, letting them all—die."

Her brow furrows. She has been speaking in a straightforward way. Her hands are clenching where they're laced together in her lap.

Hana finds it hard to look Fareeha in the eye. Instead she looks at the dark curve of the tattoo on her cheek.

"Do you still think about things like that now?" she asks, trying to force casualness into her tone.

Fareeha pauses for a few seconds. When Hana looks up, her gaze is searing.

"Before, the people I fought alongside were...coworkers. Now they are friends, family...a lover."

The silence stretches as thin and tense as a rubber band pulled too far and about to snap.

"I think about it more than ever," Fareeha says finally. "About whether I could make the right decision. About what the right decision would be."

A different dilemma from Hana's, but maybe not so different after all.

"So how do you cope? How do we cope?"

Fareeha smiles again, perhaps in an attempt to break the leaden feeling settled over both of them. "Do you have any tips?"

Hana shifts. In this case, it's much easier to listen than talk. "I just...tried not to think about it. It was way easier than I ever would have thought, you know, to just convince myself that nobody was really dead. I wasn't seeing them at base anymore because they'd gone home. They'd been dismissed, not killed.

"I mean, I knew. I knew they were dead. But it wasn't _real_. I never really thought about it until..." She trails away.

"I guess that's one way to cope," Fareeha says.

"Yeah, it's shitty. I don't recommend it."

"If you don't mind my asking, why are you bringing this up now? Did something else happen on the Cairo mission?"

"No. I just—" Hana swallows. This feels like the hardest part to say. Her past is factual, relatively easier to speak of. But this feels like admitting a childish fear. "I've been having nightmares. About...you guys dying while I'm okay."

Fareeha does not laugh or reprimand her. She makes a soft noise of understanding.

"Don't tell me you do too," Hana says.

"Well, no. Not dreams, anyway. But I think about it."

"It feels like a matter of time." Hana's voice rises against her will. Again she is reliving her nighttime visions, seeing each and every one of her comrades die in front of her. She's dreamt of Fareeha falling from the sky before. "We can't keep expecting to counter lethal forces without taking casualties. Even Angela can't save us from everything."

Fareeha is silent. Her face is shadowed; she has thought of this too, is thinking of it.

"So how do we cope?" Hana asks again. "Do I keep pretending?"

"What keeps me going," Fareeha says eventually, "is remembering who we are and what we are doing. All of us, all of us here, have devoted ourselves to this. If we should die in the field, we died fighting for a cause we believed in.

"That is more than a lot of people can say."

Hana considers. "And that helps?"

"I can't say it removes the fear, but it eases it."

The medbay is quiet. There's just the beep of the monitoring systems and the rustle of cloth as Hana moves the sheets or Fareeha shifts in her chair.

"Who brought the flowers?" she asks, out of nowhere.

Hana smiles. "Bastion."

Fareeha looks surprised. "They're pretty."

"Yeah. They are," Hana says, and wipes her eyes.

* * *

She's discharged from the medbay about a week later. Nobody asks too many questions; most of them have suffered significant injuries in the field before. Hana kind of wishes they would ask. It's easier to talk when someone is asking questions than on her own, without prompting.

On the day when she's released, Doctor Ziegler quietly informs her that she doesn't feel comfortable keeping her on the sleep-deprivation medication. Hana thinks the doctor might blame the formula, and herself by extension, for what happened in Cairo.

She wants to say it wasn't her fault, but she doesn't find the words. So she just shrugs and nods and accepts it. Perhaps more nightmares will be coming her way, but somehow the fear is not as paralyzing anymore.

She apologizes to Satya. The architech takes it gracefully, though she insists that an apology was not necessary.

Back in her dorm, back in team exercises, team dinners. People she knows and cares about around her. The grisly images still flash through her head, but now Fareeha's words do too, and they soften the impact. Life is no more guaranteed outside this job than inside it, and they're doing something. They're fighting for something. She has that, at least, to hold onto.

She hunts Bastion down the day she's discharged to say thank you. Gratitude both for the flowers, which she's relocated to her room, and for pulling her from the rubble in the temple. She gets a tilted head and a _bweeooop_ in response. Without Zenyatta, she has no way to interpret that, but maybe it's better that way. Bastion's own words—beeps?—without translation or interference.

She streams again. There's both concern and rudeness regarding her uncharacteristic week of silence, but she shrugs it off with a laugh and a wink. She doesn't talk about Cairo; her being a member of Overwatch is hardly a secret, but she still doesn't care to mix her two professions, no matter how many questions with which she's bombarded every stream.

An eagle-eyed viewer asks about the vase of camellias on her windowsill. She smiles and gives an easy answer: "from a friend."

On a counter-Talon strike in Madrid, a little less than a month after Cairo, Lúcio saves Roadhog and Jack with a well-timed blast from his sonic amplifier against a tank-like omnic. When he gets back, Hana greets him off the transport.

When the two of them are settled in his room, his soundboard propped on his lap and windows open to the sound of the sea, she says something overdue.

"Hey, sorry."

"What about?"

Hana shrugs. "I kind of worried about you. Thought that you weren't taking all this seriously enough. But you are. I know you are. Being carefree is just another way of dealing with it."

One that she knows all too well.

Lúcio studies her for a few seconds before he smiles.

"It's all good. So long as you know you can talk to me whenever, okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah," she says, and smiles. For once the invitation feels genuine. For once she thinks she might take him up on it sometime.

"Now wait 'til you hear this," he says, pulling up his latest work-in-progress.

* * *

A nightmare wakes her up at three in the morning. It's a new one, one about being buried alive in Cairo while the members of her old squad stand in a circle and stare, asking her why she isn't crawling to safety. They had their lives ripped from them, and she's content to sit there and die.

She frowns into her damp pillow. The dream shakes her more than she cares to admit. She supposes it's gotten pretty bad if her subconscious needs to force her to address issues her conscious won't.

She doesn't want to go back to sleep. All too frequently her nightmares continue where they left off. Instead she gets up. Her room feels claustrophobic. She steps into the hallway. The base is different at night, quiet and shadowy. It would be ominous if she was ten years younger.

There's a light on in the kitchen. Jack is sitting at the table and nursing a mug. His eyes look bloodshot; his mouth is set in a grim curve. He doesn't notice her until she's standing just in front of him, and then he jerks up.

"Oh. Hana. Late stream?"

"Yeah," she says, then remembers that she's trying to be more honest. "Uh, no, actually. Nightmare."

He nods as if unsurprised and stares back into his cup. Hana pours herself some milk and retrieves the package of storebought cookies from its hiding place in the pantry behind the soup cans. Jack doesn't say anything else when she sits across from him.

"What about you?"

He looks up again and grunts in lieu of asking the question.

"You have a nightmare too?"

"No." He takes a long few gulps from the mug. "Never went to sleep."

"What are you drinking?"

"Irish coffee."

She wrinkles her nose. She can't imagine drinking coffee _or_ whiskey at this time of night, let alone both at once.

"Are you okay?" It's a redundant question; she doesn't think he would be up at three and drinking unless he _wasn't_ okay. But still, nothing else comes to mind to ask.

He just grunts again. The silence is long and awkward before he finally decides to speak once more.

"You all recovered from Cairo?"

"I think so. Angela gave me the all-clear."

"'S good."

"Okay, what is wrong with you?" Hana asks, finally losing her patience. "Are you drunk?"

His eyes narrow. It would be a more imposing look if it wasn't for the bloodshot eyes. As it is, Hana's stricken by just how _old_ Jack looks. The man she saw in posters and on the news growing up is gone. There is no more gold in his hair, just soft white. The upper half of his face is wrinkled; the lower half scarred.

Will she look like that someday? _An old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone—_ Reinhardt's pick for movie night a few months back helpfully reminds her.

No. Not possible. She'll age like Ana, with grace.

"Not yet," he says grimly, and takes another swig as if hoping to change that fact as quickly as possible.

"What's wrong?" she repeats.

He looks at her. "Thinking about retiring."

"I thought you were never going to retire. Thought you had too much to do."

"Yeah, just like I thought I'd never sign up with Overwatch again, and here we are. Here I am, making the same mistakes."

"Not the same," Hana tries. "You're not Strike Commander this time."

"Not officially. Winston's still asking for my help coordinating things, but...you'd be better at that, I think. Or Pharah. New blood. My era's done. I have enough on my hands."

"You still feel guilty about it all?"

"I'm gonna feel guilty about it until the day I die," he says. And though his words slightly stumble over each other, and he doesn't quite meet her eyes, something about the way he says it makes Hana believe him.

Her first impulse is to say that it's not his fault. Hollow words, hollow comfort. Then she remembers speaking to Satya in the medbay. It's not what she wanted to hear, and it's probably not what Jack wants to hear either.

She seeks around for something else. "Fareeha says that the dead died fighting for what they believe in. That helps her."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Does that help _you_?" There is an edge, something slightly mocking, in his voice. If he was in a less pathetic state, it might rub her the wrong way. As it is, she just feels sorry for him. He doesn't want comfort. He wants to do this, sit here in the kitchen in the dead of the morning and drink until his head spins. He wants to suffer because he thinks he deserves it.

"I don't know. Looking back, like to when we were recruited, it never seemed like much of a choice. We could have—well, a couple others did—just slack off and get dismissed. I would have rather stayed home and kept playing, except I knew that _home_ and _playing_ depended on someone doing something. So it ended up being me—us."

His eyes seem sharper, his gaze less remote. Hana shifts, crunches down on a cookie. She's feeling tired again, which is a good sign. Maybe it's just the heaviness of the conversation, though; emotional tiredness rather than physical.

"The others felt the same way?"

She barks a laugh. It tastes bitter. "You think we talked about it? We hardly talked about missions. We talked about games. We talked shit. We didn't talk about anything _real._

"But they had to have, right? Nobody _wants_ to die getting riddled with holes by a Bastion turret. Maybe you want glory, and there were definitely a couple like that. Not after the first time we deployed, though. Not after we saw what we were up against.

"So how do I know the dead don't resent me? I don't think they're all sitting happy in their graves wishing me the best. They probably would give anything to switch places. And I can't really blame them."

A silence. Then—"Huh."

"What?" His expression is different now. She doesn't like it.

"You think living is lucky."

She likes that even less.

"Uh, yeah. I'm here 'cause of luck. They're dead and I think they'd rather not be. What else are you supposed to call it?"

"Well," he says, "waking up after the explosion felt less like luck and more like—punishment."

He mumbles the last word into his mug as he takes another drink, but Hana hears him just the same. She looks into his face and feels her stomach flip and her throat tighten. She thinks about waking up in Bastion's arms and crying. About giving up and being glad of it.

"세상에." Is he right? Is it the same for her?

She makes a swipe across the table for his cup. He makes a noise of indignation, but Jack's alcohol-dulled reflexes are no match for her. She takes a drink, then sputters and almost spits it out. It's _gross,_ all the more bitter after her own sweet snack. She's glad enough to hand it back to him as the whiskey burns down her throat.

"Angela says it's a bad idea to mix alcohol and caffeine."

Jack snorts. "I've known that woman long enough to take her ideas with a grain of salt."

"She's a good doctor."

"Yes. Too good." He eyes the cookies. "You owe me one."

She reluctantly hands one over, unable to argue.

It's edging closer and closer to four. Her eyelids feel heavy again. If she went back to bed now, the nightmare probably wouldn't return; not the same, anyway.

"Are you going to go to bed?" she asks him.

"Gotta finish this first."

"I'll stay up too, then," she decides, and she stands to refill her glass. "It's sad to drink alone."

"That's the point," he grumbles, but offers no further objections.

* * *

It's only been a couple of weeks since she last picked up the bow, but even that short period of inactivity seems to have eroded her skills. Hana spends several successive evenings on the practice range, shooting and shooting until her marks are up where they were before she stopped practicing. Only then can she consider another session with Hanzo; she wouldn't want to embarrass herself and disappoint him with an abysmal performance.

Satya joins her, practicing with her new hard-light pistol. She's getting steadily better and better. Hana feels flattered, knowing that Satya's preferred practice partner is Amélie. Hana is a far cry from the taciturn ex-Talon sniper, and though she's loath to admit it she's nowhere near as good a shot either. But that doesn't seem to matter to Satya.

The events of the medbay go unspoken between them, but the silence is not awkward. Quite the opposite; it feels like something that does not need to be discussed. Satya said all that was needed by sending Fareeha to talk to Hana, and Hana said her part when she apologized.

At her first lesson with Hanzo following their hiatus, Satya and Amélie share the range with them. Hanzo apologizes to Hana, offering to excuse them if their presence disturbed her. Amélie wears a look as if she'd very much like to see him try, but it never comes to that. Hana shakes her head and smiles; the more the merrier.

Hanzo watches her as always, makes minute adjustments to her stance. Hana shoots well, very well, considering the off-time. She is focused and sharp as the arrows. Her distractions are being dealt with.

"You're doing better," he says. His voice is low so that the other two, across the range, cannot hear. Hana glances over. Satya is hefting Amélie's rifle, a look of intense concentration on her features as she looks through the scope. The other woman watches, her lips hinting at a smile.

"Yeah," Hana says, looking back at Hanzo. Here they are. People she cares about, potential casualties. She is okay. She is okay. She can deal with that.

"I'm glad," he says, and gives her a rare smile.

* * *

Gabriel stands at the railing looking over the strait. No mask tonight. He smokes a cigar. His pose, lazily leaning there, is reminiscent of Jesse. Or, more likely, it's the other way around.

He looks when she steps outside. She's surprised to see him. He's not a _frequent_ sight around the base, coming and going like a wraith. To see him doing something as mundane as having a smoke and watching the sunset feels weird.

\--And his face, without the mask. The horrible scarring, the tissue flaking off in smoke to expose muscle and bone, then growing back. A process that continues despite Doctor Ziegler's best attempts at treating it. It's a sight as hypnotizing as it is disturbing. Hana can't tell which smoke comes from the cigar and which comes from him.

"Song," he says as a greeting. She hasn't heard him say her name enough for her to be entirely comfortable with hearing it in that raspy, inhuman voice.

"Reyes," she responds, cheeky. The corner of his mouth twitches into something that could be a scowl or a smile. She chooses to believe it's the latter. She joins him in leaning against the railing, leaving barely a foot of space between their elbows.

"You wanted company?" he rasps.

"I wanted to enjoy a nice evening. I didn't know you were out here."

"Yeah, well. Give me a minute and I'll be gone." He taps the end of the cigar and sends ashes crumbling down the rocks into the ocean.

"You don't have to go."

He looks at her out of the corner of his eye. It feels like a long time. No words, just looking. Then—

"San Jose. My second time in the field as a part of the SEP. Omnic hold on that whole region was—well. Missions more suicide than not. We were just running recon, except we got caught. Everyone else got gunned down. I got away because I ran fast enough. Because of the program."

He breathes out smoke.

"Just because of the program."

She looks at him. He meets her eyes. The flesh around his cheeks dissolves, reforms, rots off again. She doesn't look at it. She's fixed on his gaze. There's something there, even as his tone is casual, conversational.

"Heard you were collecting war stories," he says, by way of an explanation. He taps the cigar again, holds it for a few seconds, and then offers it to her.

She doesn't know what else to say or do, so she accepts it and takes a drag. She manages not to cough with some difficulty, and though she does appreciate letting her breath out in a puff of smoke, she hands it back to him with relief.

"There was a protocol for what to do when we ejected from our mechs," she says. She speaks more to the sunset than to him. It's hard to talk about things like this while looking people in the eye. "Keep moving, be a small target, wait for GPS to broadcast our location so we could get a new mech dropped. On paper, it worked like that. But when we were up against omnics, especially Bastions, which would shred a suit in seconds, getting ejected was a death sentence. The most you could really do was self-destruct and hope you took some of them out.

"So one time, this guy in my squad ejected. And we all—okay, maybe just me—expected it to go like it always went. He's down, we keep going. Whatever. But it didn't go like that. Someone else actually stopped to try to help him. She flew down and tried to pull him into her cockpit.

"And then both of them got gunned down instead of just him, while the rest of us watched. Just watched! I could have helped. I could have covered for them, flown a diversion, used the defense matrix. But nobody else even tried. Just her, and so she died."

Her eyes are wet. She smiles, bitterly. Maybe it was better before, when she didn't let anything out, because now it seems like she can't shut up.

"Why do I keep thinking about stuff like this? Why can't I just let it go? Like you said, shit happened to you too, to everyone else! Why am I the only one falling apart over it? Am I really just a _stupid kid_?"

Her words echo over the water. She sounds shrill and annoying in her own biased ears. In that moment, jumping into the ocean seems like a good idea, better than embarrassing herself further, anyway. What's inspiring her to tell _him_ this? She doesn't even _trust_ him.

Gabriel laughs, like she expects. There's something comforting about that, getting the result she expected, even if it makes her blood boil and her ears burn.

But then his words, when they come, are not what she expects.

"You think you're the only one bothered? Song, look at Jack and tell me he's doing fine. Falling apart looks a hell of a lot more like that than anything you're doing. Look at Ana; fought tooth and nail to keep her kid away from the military.

"...Look at _me._ You want to see dysfunction? You won't see it in the mirror. You're doing better than any of us ever did. You're figuring it out. You're _talking_ about it. You're not a kid. You haven't been a kid since they stuck you in a mech and threw you to the wolves.

"It's not childish to feel things. You've only really got to start worrying when you stop."

The silence is hard. Hana still can't look at him. She stares down at the water. Her vision is a mess of blurry light. Tears drip down her cheeks every time she blinks, salty water joining the sea below. She breathes in deep lungfuls of air that smell like the ocean and cigar smoke.

"I gave up," she chokes out. She's trying not to sob aloud. Maybe it's easier to say things in front of him because she _doesn't_ trust him, hardly even knows him. Just a wraith, someone who doesn't care about her problems, someone who won't worry about her. "In Cairo. I thought I was going to die, and I gave up. I was glad. I thought I deserved it."

He takes a long, audible drag on the cigar. When she turns to sneak a glance, blinking enough to bring him into focus, he isn't smiling anymore. His scarred brow is furrowed.

"Well," he finally rumbles, "we've probably all been there too."

* * *

A dream: she's playing Mario Kart, but instead of cars, she's riding atop one of Hanzo's dragons. Lena passes her, zipping along, and Hana grabs the horns of her steed to urge _faster, faster._ When she looks right, she can see Fareeha flying in her blue suit. Satya is seated on her back. If Hana were to see it awake, she would laugh, but in the dream only a vague amusement registers.

Then she's in her mech instead. The boosters are going full-throttle. She catches up to and passes Tracer, who calls out " _No fair!"_ And Hana reaches the finish line. Her mech's pink feet stand out against the black-and-white checks.

There is nobody else there. Not Lena, though she could only have been a few seconds behind. Just Hana, in her mech, waiting.

She wakes.

The light in her room is pale and soothing. She checks her phone; it's just past seven. She stretches and lies there for a few seconds longer. She feels wide awake. It's good to let herself just stare at the ceiling and not think too hard.

She gets up, makes her bed, stretches. It comes easily. Somehow she feels like she's still in a dream. The morning is so still and peaceful, too peaceful to be reality. In a few minutes she will listen to her debrief, and the serenity will be gone. But for now she can pretend. She can think about her dream, about the grey sky out her windows, about what she'll have for breakfast.

The photograph catches her eye, as it always does. But today there is no acute pain, no guilt, no averting her eyes. There is only a dull ache.

She gently pries it out from under the thumbtack and lifts it to inspect it more closely. She runs her fingers over each face.

Comrades. Friends. Some alive, most dead. All of them are immortal in the picture. In that moment, they smile forever, ignorant of what is to come.

She looks at So-yi, the girl she's giving bunny ears. The girl who tried to save someone else by pulling him into her mech. The girl she'd known for years before the enlistment, with whom she'd played too many games to count.

So-yi hadn't made a career out of gaming the way Hana had. She'd been too shy, and she'd preferred to play just for the fun of it. But she had been better. She'd won nearly every time they competed. And when the military recruited Hana, she had convinced So-yi to come too.

"I'm still here," Hana murmurs quietly. "I'm still trying."

She's still breathing. She's still fighting.

That counts for something, right?

**Author's Note:**

> Comments always appreciated!


End file.
